Today we rented a car to drive to Mount Fuji. We booked the car near Shibuya so we could spend the evening there after returning it, very efficient planning on our part. We arrived and immediately found the famous Shibuya Crossing. It was still morning, so relatively less chaotic, but still full of tourists taking photos. We took a few ourselves, naturally, and then headed to the rental car place.
Getting the car was quick and surprisingly smooth, and the car itself was spotless. A very strong contrast to our Zipcar experiences in England. I decided to drive while Antoine focused on researching the best Mount Fuji viewpoints. As I started driving, Antoine entered full research mode, switching between Google and ChatGPT. Driving in Japan was actually quite pleasant, aside from the fact that they drive on the other side of the road. There were a couple of moments where I got a bit too close on the left, but not enough to scratch the car. That felt like a small victory.
Our first stop was Lake Kawaguchi, which offers a beautiful view of Mount Fuji with the lake in the foreground. It was peaceful and really scenic, except the top of the mountain was hidden behind clouds. We decided to wait it out while eating the onigiri we picked up from 7 Eleven. While we were sitting there, I heard two girls speaking Korean nearby. Trusting Korean photo standards completely, I took my chance and asked them to take photos for us. As expected, they delivered. After securing some solid photos, we moved on.
Our second stop was a flower garden with a Mount Fuji view. Unfortunately, there were no flowers yet, and Mount Fuji was still playing hide and seek behind the clouds. There was an indoor dome though, so at least we got to see some flowers. At this point, we were pretty exhausted from all the traveling, so we decided to take a quick nap inside. We found some quiet benches upstairs where no one was around. As I lay down, I wasn’t sure if I could actually fall asleep in public. The next thing I knew, I woke up 30 minutes later to the sound of my own snoring. So apparently, yes.
Our final stop was Arakurayama Sengen Park, the classic viewpoint with the pagoda overlooking the city and Mount Fuji in the background. It was by far the most popular spot, and it was packed with tourists when we arrived. We were completely drained at this point, but still committed to climbing up the steep hill for the iconic view. After what felt longer than it probably was, we made it to the top and earned the photos. Worth it, but also never doing that climb casually again.
After hitting all our spots, we headed back to Shibuya. Unfortunately, the return trip took much longer due to traffic. I even tried taking a detour to avoid it, which did not help and only added a bonus round of car sickness. After almost three hours of driving, we finally made it back and returned the car without any issues. Another small victory.
There were two shops in Shibuya that Antoine really wanted to visit, the Nintendo Store and the Pokemon Store, conveniently located right next to each other as if designed to test self control. Antoine was ready to buy everything in sight, but we managed to narrow it down to two Nintendo plushies for him and one Pokemon plushie for Hazel. Good progress.
After the plushie shopping, we went back to Shibuya Crossing to see it at night. This time it was much more crowded, with waves of people rushing across every time the light turned green, phones out and ready. There was even a couple taking wedding photos in the middle of it all, jumping in and out between red and green lights like it was part of the shoot. Respect for the commitment. After embracing the chaos and taking our share of photos, we headed back to the hotel and called it a day.